


(light of) little nowhere towns

by coffeecrowns



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, Trans Character, and by that I mean all of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 04:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14560911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeecrowns/pseuds/coffeecrowns
Summary: Or, Five Times the Jeans Save His Life, and One Time They Didn't





	(light of) little nowhere towns

1.

He’s older than he’d like to be, when he buys his first pair. Well, the first pair that count. He’d owned jeans as a little kid, back before puberty made him feel like he was drowning under words like, “beautiful little miss.” But then he was expected to wear dresses and skirts - and that was bad and wrong in ways he didn’t have words for.

He finally gets to words together and the right books in his hands when he’s sixteen. Transgender. He picks Barry after a great uncle who was gay, the only other queer person he kind of sort of knows. It’s a small town, where he grows up. He can see the world outside and already, this life suffocated him in ways he isn’t made to endure. He wants to study things that aren’t in his local library. So he whispers his name to himself in the dark and starts applying to university. He receives admissions letters addressed to Barry, only they get intercepted by his parents.

That part isn’t fun. He’s broke and, well, he’s not kicked out, but it becomes unbearable for him to stay at home. So he leaves. He leaves five siblings behind, and he isn’t proud of it, but he believes they’ll be okay. He moves away and he has a full scholarship, but the feeling that it’s too much all at once doesn’t go away.

The jeans themselves are his going away present to himself. Well, really it’s a ‘thank god you have a job on campus you aren’t going to die’ present, but it’s all the same at the end of the day. He buys a few cheap pairs. They are safe, he feels safe in them, and that’s new. He’s never put on clothes and felt _better_. But suddenly it’s wave of calm, like one little thing has clicked into place, in the churning ocean that is his body. 

It doesn’t fix the loneliness of his first year, he doesn’t go home ever again, and that’s a crushing fact to bear. It’s worth it, to give up his old identity in order to be seen as a man, even a little bit. He tells himself it’s worth it, when he’s crying silently in his dark room. He tells himself it’s worth it because it’s terrifying and endless.

But he looks at himself in the mirror and he doesn’t want to die. The jeans were an exclusively men's clothes, where he grew up. He doesn’t belong there anymore, but he’s been shaped by it anyways. He gets to see himself fill that role. He looks masculine, instead of just feeling masculine. And he for the first time, he can see the outlines of a man that - if he plays his cards right- he can become. 

2.

Then, suddenly, he’s part of a story he would have written off as weird sci-fi, the kind he eventually got into, the kind where he nearly dies frequently. It’s not like he can die, well, it’s not like it matters. That fact combined with the fact he wants to go home, he wants to go home so badly some days, and it hurts so much looking up at the death cloud that contains all his home, all his family, makes it hard to pay attention the world around him. The jeans are more of a good luck charm, a comfort item, even. But they protect him from the elements, the environment, from scratching himself on trees and rocks, they keep the bugs off, and once or twice, fangs from biting him.

He’s out with Taako, scouting something or other, and it’s been a long day, they’re tired from trekking through the woods. Taako suddenly collapses on the ground, rustling in the bushes behind them.

He has to bring Taako, who has been bitten, back to the Starblaster, who’s thin leggings yielded to fangs Barry didn’t even see, let alone the creature they were attached to. Taako goes pale from the poison, then faintly green and yellow, and he _shakes._ Barry is out of his element, surviving from sheer dumb luck of fashion choices. He’s carrying Taako back, and he just wants his, fuck, friend? - to live.

Taako falls quiet, and that’s a bad sign, and so Barry is saying every reassuring thing he can think to say in every language they both know, reverting to mongoose’s intimate chatter. Only three of them speak it, really, and Barry hopes it’s grounding. He also can’t help but think of the third speaker, Lup, who is going to kill them if they survive this. 

“Don’t let Lup see,” Taako whimpers, after a chilling few minutes of silence.

“What?” He asks, panting, having heard Taako just fine.

“Don’t let her see me,” says Taako, sounding resigned, and then, trying to upturn his voice, “ these are her leggings, and if she won’t wear them again then she’s gonna be grumpy until she can get a new pair.”

“You’re going to be fine, Taako,” Barry says, “No deal. You’ll have to live to face Lup yourself. 

“Sorry, no can do, Barold,” says Taako. He doesn’t say anything else. The life flows out of him quickly as the shaking stops, and Taako gives a last little sigh. Barry holds on tighter, runs faster, and when he reaches the Starblaster, Merle rushes out.

He’s too late, and they cover Taako’s body before Lup sees, but all Barry can think is how useless he feels. How stupid and senseless death is, and how it’s only going to be a month before the finish the 21st cycle. She looks at him, she looks at the sheet covering his brother’s body, and it all seems unfair. 

3.

“They want my what?” Barry says, hoping Lucretia had mistranslated something.

 “The jeans, Barold,” said Magnus, too contently.

 “The ones I’m wearing?” He says, in disbelief.

 “Well yeah, but this,” Lucretia lowers her voice, “assclown king is willing to trade the Light of Creation for your pants, which will 100% come back next year if we have the light,” which, put like that, Lucretia has a point.

 “Barry, you’re trading one pair of pants for an entire plane,” says Magnus, with his big puppy dog eyes, and fuck, he’s going to give up these jeans.

 He takes in a deep breathe, “Is there anything else they want?”

 “I mean, he says he’ll take all of you, that your skin would make good binding from some books,” says Lucretia, after listening intently to the king speech, “hey, don’t make that face, you’re a _necromancer._ ”

 “Fine. He can have the jeans.” He starts taking off his belt, frowning, “My favourite jeans.”

 “It’s better than your skin, at least?” offers Magnus magnanimously, which, sure, he appreciates, in the grand scheme of things.

 “Please don’t disagree with him on that one, Barry,” adds Lucretia, sounding tired.

 There’s a short silence while he strips, folds the jeans, and offers them to the king. As they walk out of the throne room, Light of Creation in hand, Magnus breaks the silence.

 “Are those denim print boxers?”

 “They matched a binder I had once,” he admits, shrugging. It was funny, at the time. He doesn’t miss binding, having had Taako permanently eradicate the tits.

 “Power move,” says Lucretia, and he feels a little better about the whole thing.

4.

 It’s somewhere in the sixtieth cycle when they get to the snake world. The world is exclusively populated by snake people, with rigid gender roles and a caste system beyond that. It’s a matriarchal society, oppressively so, and the high priestess is in her cathedral is the right amount of terrifying and deeply annoying. They manage their first audience with said high priestess. Lucretia and Lup both are going to go, as the only women on board. Taako snags another spot, which is either because of his beauty and general femininity, but probably because Lup died on the last cycle and Taako clings. Barry can’t fault him, they’re caught up in a series of brutal cycles, and with that spot he asks to go as the fourth.

They attend their audience, or rather, they arrive at the cathedral. Barry and Taako aren’t regarded, and Lup and Lucretia are announced by name, and then Barry and Taako are acknowledged as “attendants.” Lup looks beyond smug, Taako annoyed, and Lucretia and Barry exchange a knowing look - one part uncomfortable with the society, but another part validated as hell to be recognized as the correct gender within it. Barry knows both Lup and Taako feel the same way.

There’s a trial they have to pass, because of course there is. They find themselves in an arena, and someone takes their sweet time assessing whether or not Taako should be allowed to fight, and eventually say no. By comparison, they take approximately to assess him, the younger of the pair hissing “what are those?” in reference to his pants, which, is unnecessary. For starters, these are his fancy jeans, a darker wash, a slightly more cut fit. Too masculine, which like, nice, but he has a bad feeling about this.

 So he has to watch his friends fight, and Lup dazzles with fire, Lucretia does much less flashy, but no less powerful casting, and he admires the hell out of both of them. But they get overrun with fresh snake women trading in, landing blow after blow. Lucretia is struck down, and Lup get even better, briefly, trying to protect her friend. He cries out, and that’s when the high priestess reveals the light hidden on her person, raising it up, and those fighting seem fueled by it, in a disturbing way- and neither Lup nor Lucretia stand a chance against the assault.

 Barry starts screaming, which inadvertently makes enough of a scene for Taako to flip wizard his way up to the high priestess’s pavilion, steal the light, and they make a break for it.

“Fuck these clowns,” says Taako, “They don’t even know what we did for them.”

 “They deserve to live,” says Barry. Taako raises an eyebrow.

“You spend too much time with my sister,” says Taako.

 “Yup,” he says, grinning, without any humour, even though the pit of his stomach has fallen out. He dreams of something else, a new solution. 

5.

 He’s being hunted by the Grim Reaper, because, of course he is. His hundred years are full of crimes against death that he was aware he was committing. He's not mad about it. They were worth it. When he’s in lich form, he can almost appreciate Kravitz’s sense of style and dramatic flair. Almost, because it’s similar enough to his family’s, but then it isn’t.

The first time he has an encounter with Kravitz in a flesh body, sans memory, he’s in Neverwinter, totally on the wrong trail, but there’s some necromancers, and he doesn’t mean to, but they’re so interesting, and they give off the kind of power he’s trained himself to be on the lookout for.

He doesn’t mean to, but he gets caught up in one thing or another, and when their ritual goes horribly wrong, (and if he had his memories he could have saved the young man who dies for it) Kravitz appears, all terror, scythe out.

 The Grim Reaper handles the obvious threats first, the robed ones, then he turns to Barry. It happens upon him that he should run, but he’s frozen with fear. Then, the Grim Reaper starts laughing.

“The most frustrating lich I’ve ever dealt with-” he starts, and then loses it. “In dad jeans!”

So Barry runs, the laughing fit of Death himself giving him an escape, lives to preserve the meat body another day, and when he remembers (he falls over a cliff, and it’s mostly not his fault), he feels almost offended.

+1

He’s wearing the jeans when he meets Lup.

They don’t save him from looking in her beautiful eyes, an action he won’t get the confidence to do again for twenty years, and he can see none of danger and none of the joy that this women will cause him.

The jeans don’t save him, they endear him to her, even though he won’t find out about that detail for even longer. The jeans can’t save him from his heart, his heart that will one day define him, gods help him, he will love this women so much that death can’t stop them. 

He’ll be wearing a different pair when he marries her, three times over the century, each one nearly killing him, but they don’t save him as much as they accompany him on this nearly ruinous adventure.

He’s wearing a different pair when he becomes a litch with her, but that isn’t saving his life as much as it reframing it under new priorities.

He goes through so many in his lonely decade, living and dying chasing any hope of her. He goes through so many jeans, he dies so many times, he grieves for her loss and he drowns under it.

He will love this women so much he will die so many times, often by her side, once in her arms, twice alone and trying to picture her face, and lose so many more bodies, and nearly lose his tether to reality, because it’s her.

The jeans don’t save him from anything, least of all Lup, least of all fate, and least of all himself.

Looking back, he doesn’t mind.  


**Author's Note:**

> Title on this bad boy comes from the song of the same title by Tallest Man on Earth, because i love them. 
> 
> I have nothing to apologize for. If you think you might have a role in this story's existence, you do, and I love you.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and if you say nice things to me I will cry forever


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